Whois information would still be easy to obtain on a limited basis. Nearly all domain name ownership data has been redacted from public Whois in the wake of privacy regulations such as GDPR. But one top level domain name remains an outlier: ... Continue Reading1 Comment
Lawmakers push for Whois privacy on .us domains
· Policy & Law10 Democrats ask NTIA to add Whois privacy to .us domain names. While Whois records in most top level domains are now private, .us remains an outlier: the U.S. government specifically forbids Whois privacy on .us domain registrations. It has ... Continue Reading4 Comments
How to change your GoDaddy Whois privacy settings
· Domain RegistrarsHere's how to display some of your information in Whois. GoDaddy now adds Domains by Proxy Whois privacy to all domains by default. But there might be cases where you want your data exposed in Whois. In this tutorial, I will walk through how to change ... Continue ReadingLeave a Comment
Reminder: there’s no Whois privacy for .us domain names
· Policy & LawDon't expect to remain private if you register a .us domain name. Last July, Chaya Raichik registered the domain name LibsofTikTok.com to go along with her Libs of TikTok Twitter account. In October, she apparently decided to protect her brand ... Continue Reading20 Comments
Is a Whois privacy service an alter ego of the registrar?
· Policy & LawDomain registrars might be too tight with their privacy services, which could create legal headaches. For years, domain name registrars have set up separate legal entities for their Whois privacy services. They did this to comply with ICANN rules ... Continue Reading7 Comments
How to make your Whois info public at GoDaddy
· Domain RegistrarsHere's how to make your private information public. GoDaddy started redacting personal information in Whois records earlier this summer. Instead of showing the registrant's name, address, phone number and email, a Whois record looks like ... Continue Reading2 Comments
Registrars: remove phone numbers from Whois
· Domain RegistrarsYou can no longer justify the harm it causes consumers. GoDaddy is making long-overdue changes to Whois records sometime soon. As much as I'll hate missing the data, this is going to significantly improve the customer experience due to ... Continue Reading26 Comments
On Privacy and Information
· Policy & LawRights, privacy, and public information as it relates to Whois. As the internet community debates Whois and privacy this week in Kobe, Japan, I'd like to revisit my thoughts on the subject. I am not in favor of default Whois privacy for domain ... Continue Reading23 Comments
Privacy advocates want Whois private by default. It shouldn’t be.
· Policy & LawLike many other public databases, Whois serves a vital public interest. It shouldn't be private by default. It's becoming increasingly clear that privacy advocates are using GDPR as an opportunity to demand privacy for all domain name registrants. They ... Continue Reading18 Comments
Web.com gets Whois Privacy patent
· Domain RegistrarsWeb.com subsidiary gets patent for Whois Privacy, as compared to Whois Proxy. GoDaddy has patents for domain name proxy services. Now a competitor, Web.com's Network Solutions, has a patent for Whois privacy. U.S. Patent #9,817,979 (pdf) for ... Continue Reading5 Comments
